How to Make a Tray

Featured Pro: Kristan Cunningham
Category: Home Décor
Time: 3:01


KRISTAN CUNNINGHAM: Hi, there. I’m Kristan Cunningham, and I’ve got another GMC Trade Secret for you, brought to you by the GMC Acadia.

So there’s lots of trays out there in the marketplace. You can get them at stores. But why would you do that? Then your neighbor could have the exact same one. So I’m going to show you how to make three custom trays, all completely different, with things you might find vintage.

This first one is going to begin with a new wood disc that I actually bought at the hardware store, but we’re going to use a vintage belt for our handles. So the first thing I’ll do is create a pattern with simple, inexpensive paper. Get out any air bubbles, because that is where the stain will want to crawl.

So I have my first coat of stain on here. I’m going to let this soak in, then go back and put a few more, get it a little bit darker; a coat of polyurethane and then some cool handles out of belts. I cannot wait for you to see this one finished.

But while it dries, we’ll move on to the next one, and this is a really cool crate that I found at the flea market this weekend. And I like the patina of it. I had this piece of plexiglass cut at my hardware store, where they’ll actually do it there for you. So give them your dimensions. They’ll cut it up. You come home and go like this. Wedge it in there. Now we’ve got a nice flat bottom.

Now the next thing we need is some handles to pick this guy up, right? So you want to take the diameter of this rope, match it up to be able to bore a hole big enough for this rope to fit through. Okay, so there’s handle number one. I’ve got one other guy to do. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

This was a suitcase, a beautiful old suitcase, and now it’s going to be a tray. Got a little bit of this crocodile leather, which I think will be a great wipeable surface to line the inside of this with. Now, I’ve already precut some matte board. I’ve got one piece for my bottom, and then pieces cut to go right along the sides. I’m going to spray the area with spray adhesive.

So we’ve got all of this in place. Flip that bad boy over so it’ll go in just like so. But for the handles, I found this great bamboo rings, and they’re actually meant to be purse handles. We want to pre-drill these because they’re not very thick. They could crack. So let’s do that first.

These are all finished now. All this dried, and we’ve got our second handle on this. I also went ahead and took my leather belt and made handles for this guy. And it just goes to show you, between belts, rope, heck, purse handles, just about anything can be made into a tray. So check out your own house. I bet there’s a million ideas that you can come up with as well.

I’m Kristan Cunningham, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.